Aaron Sorkin “Strongly Considering” Penning a Steve Jobs Biopic

Here’s a hard truth about Steve Jobs: he was just a business man. His products were popular (although controversial among tech geeks), and he ran a successful company, but his death was treated like the passing of one of history’s great leaders. The non-stop deification has become quite annoying and it doesn’t seem like it will end any time soon. Last month we reported that Aaron Sorkin was being courted by Sony to write a biopic about Jobs. The Oscar-winning screenwriter now tells E! (via THR) that “it’s something I’m strongly considering,” but added, “Right now I’m just in the thinking-about-it stages. It’s a really big movie and it’s going to be a great movie no matter who writes it.”

Hit the jump for more on the story along with my criticism of making a Steve Jobs movie.

Sorkin can usually bring magic to anything he writes and Jobs would certainly make for an interesting protagonist based on his personality. The biopic would probably be helped by the personal friendship between Jobs and Sorkin (Jobs even asked Sorkin to write a Pixar movie). According to the synopsis of Isaacson’s book, Jobs was “driven by demons” with a “searingly intense personality”. Nothing has ever said “searingly intense” like black turtlenecks and jeans.

One more thing: No offense to Sorkin (whose work I greatly admire and respect), but Lawrence of Arabia is “a really big movie”. This is about a guy who built revolutionary products and marketed the hell out of them. He didn’t campaign for social justice or try to stop wars. His greatest risk was bankruptcy and I think we would all do well to remember that.

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